The effectiveness of a brief period of isolation (timeout)
Differential reinforcement of compliance with teacher invitations to complete a specific academic task was applied to three extremely negativistic children in a special preschool class. For each child, this technique resulted in clear and useful increases in compliance as it was applied. In addition, the technique produced a greater diversity of sampling the available tasks by all children, enabling them to contact instructional materials they had previously avoided. The reinforcement system, contingent access to free playtime, materials, and a snack, mediated by a token, was thus demonstrated to be an effective contingency. In the case of two children whose compliance was not maximized by differential reinforcement alone, further increases in compliance were produced by combining a 1-min timeout for noncompliance with the differential reinforcement procedure.Some instructional control by a teacher over the classroom activities of her students is widely considered a necessity for the successful teaching of many academic skills. On the other hand, it is sometimes characterized as just another example of the excessive repression of children practised by the typical classroom. Neither side of this controversy has produced any empirical evaluation of the actual results of establishing increased instructional control; instead, the issue is argued (spiritedly) on apply systematic reinforcing consequences for such compliance, often resorting instead to reasoning, nagging, and threats contingent on noncompliance. This research was designed to analyze the possibilities of contingent reinforcement and contingent timeout as easily implemented techniques for establishing instructional control, and to examine certain academic results of the establishment of that control.Schutte and Hopkins (1970) pointed out that an operant analysis of instructions treats them as discriminative stimuli that set the occasion for an instruction-following response. To be maintained, an operant ordinarily must be reinforced. Schutte and Hopkins' excellent review of the relevant literature showed that when compliance with instructions is not reinforced, either deliberately or by natural reinforcing consequences in the environment, it is not maintained. However, consequences can be provided for instruction-following which will maintain its rate. The research of Schutte and Hopkins demonstrated a clear relationship between instructional control in a normal kindergarten classroom and continuing teacher attention to compliance. An earlier study by Zimmerman, Zimmerman, and Russell (1969) showed that in a class of retarded boys, a combination of praise with tokens 289 1973, 61,[289][290][291][292][293][294][295][296][297][298] NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 1973)
Token-mediated access to play and snacks was made contingent on completion of academic tasks in the Baseline Experiment. This contingency produced stable completion rates that were subsequently doubled, and then tripled, for four deviant children in a special preschool. A reversal design demonstrated that the contingency was functional in maintaining the children's rates of task completion. The Guidance Experiment examined the role of a social event, teacher guidance, in the acquisition of task-completion skills, in a multiple-baseline-across-tasks design (with reversals). The analysis demonstrated that teacher guidance was an important supplement to the token-mediated contingency in establishing significant increases in task completions for a second group of three deviant children in the special class. The importance of teacher guidance was related to the difficulty level of the children's tasks.
Two 5-year-old deviant preschoolers taught each other, as peer-tutors, to identify pictorial figures describing prepositional relationships. During training sessions monitored by the experimenter, the child in the peer-tutor role presented stimulus materials and provided consequences for the responses of the child in the tutee role. An assessment of generalization by each child to an academic classroom setting occurred each day. The data showed that the peer-tutor could facilitate generalization, when the tutee was probed in the peer-tutor's presence. However, it was found that the salience of the peer-tutor's presence was critical to this effect. In particular, when the peer presented the stimuli or offered occasional consequences for some correct responses, generalization was greatly enhanced.
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